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'Auto HDR' for PC? The Witcher 3, Control + More - Tested in HDR with Special K Mod!
- Thread starter Vimto
- Start date
Yeah. This mod converts the game buffers into 16bit HDR ones, tone maps it, and presents it as such. With HDR on in windows, and an HDR display, you get 'proper' localised high and low luminance.
Oh shit.... let's see
Can't agree with that sadly... the only one that looked at least inoffensive is xbox auto-hdr implementation, everything else looked way off. PC version set to console settings was close but still not it... I wonder if it's HBAO that ruins something at PC maxed settings? I noticed it way before that AO enhancements on PC version of games might make certain game scenes undesirably darker than on consoles.
This looks great! Shame it only works on DX11 titles, I would like to play the Control DLC with HDR enabled but losing RT and DLSS is gonna be rough.
I like that there are plenty of options to tweak as well, I wasn't that impressed with the results in the XBox Auto HDR video (except for Geometry Wars and to a lesser extent Arkham Knight), hopefully the community will share HDR profiles for this in the future to get the best results in supported games.
I like that there are plenty of options to tweak as well, I wasn't that impressed with the results in the XBox Auto HDR video (except for Geometry Wars and to a lesser extent Arkham Knight), hopefully the community will share HDR profiles for this in the future to get the best results in supported games.
I did not test if it dramatically affects input latency, but I noticed no perceivable difference beyond the increase in rendering load. If the game is vsyncd, that will mainly disappear anyway.
Ah, I'm not sophisticated lol, I like the shiny highlights but yeah it's prob not accurate
Utter tripe.
While HDR can be a lot more finicky on PC, such as certain games requiring manual HDR switching, but other than that, its great on PC.
You do realise these games don't have HDR support in the first place? Of course there are going to be issues but at least you can change settings to your liking, unlike with console Auto HDR. A PC game with native HDR support is no different to the console version on the same TV so I don't see how console is the better platform for HDR.
I understand, i just hate the Windows implementation of HDR and this mod seems to not worth it for so much processing and so lackluster results.
I love HDR, it's one of the biggest leaps in gaming eye candy for me. I bought an next-gen console 'cause of it, playing on pc is never the best option for HDR.
Is not the platform, but the games. Games with HDR support are good on PC in the same way as on consoles. The only hassle is identify if the game needs the HDR toggle on windows or recognize your display by itself. UWP games often requires the windows toggle on. I only turn it on to play these games. But Gears 5 (need windows toggle) is beautiful, in the same way that Destiny 2 (not requires the windows hdr toggle) is. I have been playing on my PC/ CX 55 combo and the HDR is insanely good.
All the games I've played on PC that support HDR worked perfectly and looked great on my OLED. The only issue is that sometimes you have to toggle HDR in the Windows display settings and sometimes you don't. A minor inconvenience. Sucks that you have issues with your setup.
I clearly am like you. The HDR support ( and crash because of this or that) made me buy a next gen.
Turning HDR in Windows only works with HDR compatible games.
This converts SDR games to HDR.
None of these games looked great being up-converted to HDR, at least not on the YouTube side. I don't know if I'd feel differently seeing the video download or indeed actually experiencing these in front of me but suffice to say, this video did not impress.
Dark Souls II and III in particular felt like a throwback to PS3/360 circa 2005-2008 with that bloom.
Dark Souls II and III in particular felt like a throwback to PS3/360 circa 2005-2008 with that bloom.
Control looks great as expected, can only imagine how stunning it would be if it natively supported HDR. And too bad you have to give up RT for this mod to work.
Excellent video and I'm interested to see where this mod goes.
Still seems like early days though. The crushed dark areas and unnatural colouring on some bright objects really stand out. Being able to tweak and tune levels manually for different elements of the frame is interesting. I imagine the community will start to scrape together recommended profiles for games.
Give it a couple of years and I expect we'll see some great things.
Still seems like early days though. The crushed dark areas and unnatural colouring on some bright objects really stand out. Being able to tweak and tune levels manually for different elements of the frame is interesting. I imagine the community will start to scrape together recommended profiles for games.
Give it a couple of years and I expect we'll see some great things.
My TV outputs HDR at all times with it enabled. I'm assuming it does a conversion mapping of some sort.
First make sure your TV is set to "games console" and not "PC" for the input recognition.
Then try adjusting the brightness slider in Windows, if it still looks off.
Nothing fancy. HDR's color space completely envelops SDRs. You can linearly change the brightness of the content, but it's not going to stop paper white being the same brightness as the sun when you do so. Basically, all you really should do with that setting is set your SDR content so that the brightness looks 'normal' for SDR.
Absolutely ruined skintones in these parts of the video, Geralt's skin is pretty much glowing red in HDR:
Overall way too much contrast/crushed blacks in all examples imo... this HDR technique probably has potential tho
That's the limitation of the current approach, the colour space gets expanded , which in turn increases the saturation. There are few shipping HDR games that have done the same.
Xbox HDR limits the width of the colour gamut to Rec709 , but extends the colour volume vertically to help with highlights.
There are also other limitations in regards to game's eye adpatation and exposure settings with SpecialK also doeant touch - hence the black crush. Again this is something common in some of the less considered HDR games.
This paired up with white becoming super white can create a super contrasty and overwhelmingly intense image.
It's a really nice mod though and you can play around with it and get some really pleasing results
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Did you actually watch the video? Dictator addresses that, and spends a lot of time comparing the results of the ACESCG mode to the "Tonemap Passthrough" mode, which does not have nearly the same amount of black crush or over-contrastingAbsolutely ruined skintones in these parts of the video, Geralt's skin is pretty much glowing red in HDR:
Overall way too much contrast/crushed blacks in all examples imo... this HDR technique probably has potential tho
I did yeah. Both modes did not look very good to me...
Any amount of black crush or over-saturation is already unacceptable in my book tbh... i am sorry for being an asshole and always trying to point out what i feel like is a terrible IQ and HDR but that's how i feel.
Bad HDR is worse than SDR, good HDR is incredible and from what i have seen so far( youtube only ) this is more likely to be on the side of bad HDR experiences( alongside the Auto-HDR from Xbox Series )
That video looked amazing on my C9. Can anyone test The Division? Thats one of the first games Im going to try on my Series X. Snowy NYC in The atmosphere in the Division 1 is so good .
Download Special K: discourse.differentk.fyi
Guide to Special K: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Special_K
Guide to Special K: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Special_K
The hdr in special K is completely tweakable and customizable. You can set any brightness or gamma you want.
That's not surprising.. most HDR -> SDR tonemaps either target luminance or RGB, they're going to push out saturation when bringing things back down to SDR levels because there's no other way to approximate the image in SDR. That's not really a limitation of the HDR, so much as going in reverse.Absolutely ruined skintones in these parts of the video, Geralt's skin is pretty much glowing red in HDR:
Overall way too much contrast/crushed blacks in all examples imo... this HDR technique probably has potential tho
Any still image you show someone in a messageboard is going to be tonemapped because JPEG-XR isn't a widely supported format, and thus, nothing's going to look correct :)
Also, you can apply gain to the ACES tonemap in the form of a ~.86 power-law gamma to counteract its middle-gray flatenning. It's a filmic tonemap, so it's designed to match the behavior of film, and there's not much response down there near black in film. ACES was chosen because it has the least impact on skintones in HDR. All of the aggressive response curve is up in the HDR highlights region.
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